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And hearing her voice so close suddenly felt intimate in a way that Maddie hadn't experienced in a very long time. Her heart rate ticked up, and she swallowed, her throat suddenly going dry.
“Does that make sense?”Saff’s voice cut through her daze, and Maddie realized she hadn't really heard what she had said.
She cleared her throat. “Sorry. Can you say that last part again?”
Saff continued, completely unfazed. “I know it might seem counterintuitive, but you have to kind of pull them closer to you or let them get close enough so that you can reach your arm up underneath their elbow between their bicep and their ribs and then stab upward into the back of their head.”
Maddie nodded, suddenly feeling awkward as she wondered if that meant that she should do that right there and then.
For some reason, the thought of Saff even closer to her made her heart beat even faster. She blinked, swallowing down that feeling. Then she shifted her feet until she was slightly closer, and slowly moved her other hand up.
Then she stopped.
“I don't—I don't want to accidentally touch where you were hurt.”
“It's fine,” Saff replied dismissively. “Here.”
She felt Saff’s hand move from her shoulder, then it wrapped around her wrist. She pulled her wrist forward, then touched her hand against soft, warm fabric.
“My ribs are right here,” Saff said. “Then,” she continued, pulling her hand off and moving it a few inches in the opposite direction until Maddie’s knuckles grazed against warm skin. “My bicep is right here.”
Maddie swallowed.
“So then,” Saff continued, removing her hand from Maddie's wrist and placing it instead on her elbow. Then she pulled the arm forward slowly. “You would hook it around there, and up their back, towards their head.”
Saff released her hand from her elbow, but Maddie continued moving it upward in the motion she had described until her fingers touched warm skin just behind the neckline of a shirt.
“Yeah,” Saff said, her breath curling over her ear. “But you can't stop at the neck. You have to do it higher than that.”
The air around them suddenly felt hot.
Maddie pulled her hand down, unhooking it from around Saff’s back. Then she dropped her other forearm and took a small step back, tilting her head down to the side.
“Okay. Yeah, I think I got it.”
Maddie felt for her chair, mentally berating herself. What was wrong with her?
It had to have just been because she was lonely. Saff was the only person she'd been with for days, and she must have formed some type of attachment or—she hated the word that came to mind.Crush.
It was nothing. Just her brain reacting after going so long without being intimate with anyone.
She sat down in the chair, then picked up her spoon and forced a bite.
They ate for a few moments in silence before Saff spoke again.
“Humans would probably be the bigger issue.”
Maddie paused, her spoon hovering in the air on its way to her mouth.
“Have you shot a gun before?” Saff asked.
She hummed, remembering the one time her father had taken her to a shooting range that had sound targets for the visually impaired. “Yeah. Just once, though.”
“How'd you do?”
Maddie shrugged. “Not bad, but not good either. They had sound markers on each of the targets I was shooting at. I could aim at them pretty well with the sound, but I still had a hard time hitting them.”
“What kind of gun were you using?”